Mr. Obama, freed from the political constraints of an impending election in the latter half of his second term, was also moving to put to rest a yearslong fight over the name of the mountain that has pit Alaska against electorally powerful Ohio, the birthplace of President William McKinley, for whom it was christened in 1896.

The government formally recognized the name in 1917, and efforts to reverse the move began in Alaska in 1975. In an awkward compromise struck in 1980, the national park surrounding it was named Denali National Park and Preserve, but the mountain continued to be called Mount McKinley....

The mountain came to be known as Mount McKinley after a gold prospector who had just emerged from exploring the Alaska Range heard that Mr. McKinley had won the Republican presidential nomination, and declared that the tallest peak should be named in his honor as a show of support....

I'd always assumed the mountain got the name as a consequence of the assassination of President McKinley, they way so many things were named after John F. Kennedy. That wasn't the case, and that makes the renaming more apt.

Do you approve of Obama's restoration of the mountain's name?

No. Obama does too much by executive order.

No. It's too politically correct.

No. McKinley was honored and the honor should not be so easily withdrawn.

Yes. Denali is the real name, properly restored.

Yes. It's an easy and nice way to show respect for the native people of Alaska.

Yes. It's offensive to slap a President's name on something the man had nothing to do with.

Yes, but only if Obama's name is never slapped irrelevantly on anything.

138 comments:

Mr. Obama, freed from the political constraints of an impending election in the latter half of his second term,

I'm bemused by news reports constantly referring to Obama's new "freedom". Why is this something that we should be interested in/encouraged by? Why should he be "freed" from accountability? Why is this the way reporters explain his whims?

I suspect its because reporters have been dreaming of Obama dropping his no red state/blue state act and finally going full progressive. But this is supposed to be news, and we are supposed to be a nation of checks and balances and elections that are based on something (other than lies to get you to the point of being "freed").

2. How much money will the park department have to waste changing all the printed materials?

3. How much will local souveneir shops lose in now-wasted merchandise?

4. This should have been the decision of the people of Alaska, not an Executive Order - Why didn't they put it to vote and SEE if they wanted it changed?

5. This is stupid grandstanding without a purpose. Why not use an Executive Order to do something REAL like resettling Syrian Refugees???

6. Continuing to lower the bar for what a Presidential "accomplishment" looks like helps Hillary, in that this is equivalent to touting "miles flown" as an accomplishment.

7. Lowering the bar also makes Trump look more plausible as a candidate, since if "Changing the Name of Tall Things" is your main job, well, Trump has experience in that. Heck, he can even BUILD tall things and name them! Hooray for Tall Things!

8. Obama is once again acting like the OWNER of the US, rather than the SERVANT. Why don't we get servant-leaders anymore?

If Presidential aggrandizement is OK, then the name is fine the way it is. If Presidential aggrandizement is not OK, then the President shouldn't get to decide all by his lonesome what the highest mountain on the continent is called.

The mountain was named by an act of Congress. Presidents shouldn't overrule Congressional acts. If the mountain's name needed to be changed, it needs to be done by Congress. That's how our system works. Or, it's how the system is supposed to work.

I'm inclined to give Obama a pass on this one. The mountain had a name used by the locals, it was changed for crass political purposes, in recent years pretty much everybody has switched back to the original name, and now it's been "officially" renamed again for crass political purposes.

And let's face it, Denali is a much cooler name.

Here's a hint, if you haven't noticed it folks: Obama would rather have you ranting about silly things than taking him to task for significant things.

But what was named by act of Congress should be renamed by act of Congress.

This would have been a trivially easy bill to get passed if Obama thumped the bully pulpit, if the result was what he cared about.

But, yeah... this barely rates on the scale of political shenanigans and scandals.

A bilion dollars in friendly gifts from foreign friends as Secretary of State?The exposure of all our state secrets to foreign hackers?The collapse of the middle east, Iranian nukes, Mexican guns?Immigration policy by executive order?Obamacare policy set by executive tweet?Political weaponization of the IRS?

Red state Republicans should begin systematically renaming any geographic features named after democratic politicians to completely unpronounceable native names. Start with Kennedy Space Center. Certainly that swamp had some other name first.

"Setting the stage on Sunday night, Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Alaska that climate change skeptics won't be remembered kindly."I think the people who are slow to come to this table will be written up by historians as having been some of the folks most irresponsible in understanding and reacting to scientific analysis," Kerry said."

I wonder who thinks to themselves "I am on the wrong side of history. My opinions are null and will be ridiculed with hindsight's 20/20 vision."

8:00 AM Day one of the next Republican president. Declare Obama's re-naming null and note that what was named by Congress can only be re-named by Congress. If Congress wishes to delegate the naming to the people of Alaska, they have the power to do so.

It will be a busy day for the next president--declaring so many executive orders dead letters. And restoring some constitutional order to this country.

This is a microaggression against dead, white men--especially overweight ones.......McKinley is vanishing into the Millard Fillmore gloom of obscure American Presidents. The most notable event of his Presidency was his assassination. His immediate successor, Teddy Rosevelt, has all the attention and all the glamour. One notes that TR had about two and a half hours of actual combat experience and that McKinley fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Posterity sucks.

So the left believes that it is acceptable for the President to not only unilaterally rename things that were named by acts of Congress, but do so in a case where it is a sitting president renaming something that was named for a former president.

"Red state Republicans should begin systematically renaming any geographic features named after democratic politicians to completely unpronounceable native names. Start with Kennedy Space Center. Certainly that swamp had some other name first."

Ummm..."Kennedy Space Center" is the name of the man-made rocket-launching facility at Cape Canaveral, which had been renamed Cape Kennedy after JFK's assassination. It regained it's prior name of Cape Canaveral in 1973.

Congress can name post offices and other federal buildings. Here President Obama is merely acceding to the wishes of the Alaska state legislature. It's not unilateral renaming by executive fiat, it's an exercise in federalism.

Here President Obama is merely acceding to the wishes of the Alaska state legislature.

I'm sure it will now go quietly away now that black men are openly declaring that they intend to shoot whites, because white, and hoards are cheering them on twitter... but where was this 'federal government should stay out' attitude when we were supposed to be gearing up to change the name of anything possibly named after a guy who was the second cousin of the best friend of a guy who fought for the Confederacy?

The idea that Obama did this and the news media supports this because they're avid believers that the federal government should follow the locals' lead is brilliant. It's such a big lie I almost believed it myself.

"Ann Althouse said...'So is Congress allowed to gum up everything in the country by starting a fight about something and never finishing? Power: Use it or lose it.' I have a hard time believing this position represents a principle you actually hold/would defend in other contexts, Professor."

"But I have no illusion that any decision by this Court can keep power in the hands of Congress if it is not wise and timely in meeting its problems. A crisis that challenges the President equally, or perhaps primarily, challenges Congress. If not good law, there was worldly wisdom in the maxim attributed to Napoleon that 'The tools belong to the man who can use them.'"

Not that naming a mountain is a crisis. It's the opposite of a crisis.

Now it would be apt to attract Native Americans to visit Denali, which we seem not to do in the case of Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon or even Mesa Verde or Chaco Canyon, which are still run as white country clubs:

If it was named McKinley by a Congressional act and signed into law by the president, which it all was in 1917, it makes no constitutional sense for Obama to be able to now rename it by executive order, unless that 1917 act was repealed. Was it?

A very good point.

U.S. Statutes at Large, Vol. 39, Part 1, Chap. 121, pp. 938-39. "An Act To establish the Mount McKinley National Park, in the Territory of Alaska." S. 5716; Public Act No. 353. Signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in 1917.

The descendants of William McKinley should bring a lawsuit. Nothing in the Constitution empowers a president to repeal a law without Congress.

Congress should pass a law mandating that the public school that averages the lowest test scores in each school district that takes Federal education funds be renamed "Barack H. Obama Elementary School." (Probably that will happen anyway in Democratic Party-dominated districts.)

William, President McKinley successfully waged a two-front war, wrapped up the Indian wars, sent US Marines to Peking to suppress the Boxer Rebellion, and didn't get in the way of an economic recovery from a financial panic. He had plenty of accomplishments, even if you don't remember them.

Any pattern emerging? From what I can see, he delights in doing things that help the bad guys or endanger the good guys. Mt. McKinley- Denali renaming is a trivial "poke in the eye" of traditionalists, but it follows the same format.

Isn't every rock, or mound of dirt, or anything they decide, sacred to the Indigenies? All they have to do is say something is sacred, and it is. In fact, it only takes one of them to say it's sacred, and then it suddenly is, like magic.

I don't believe that it is historically significant to the majority of native Alaskans. I do believe it has been an issue on which to play the victimized native card for a generation or two.

Alaska is really big. Alaska is very cold. Land travel is still very difficult and dangerous. I have my doubts that most historic Alaskan peoples thought much or even knew of the existence of a really big mountain hundreds of miles away when they were trying to figure out where the next seal was coming from.

The Greeks had Olympus. The Greeks had a dense communication network among themselves in a land area 13 times smaller. But this would be like saying ancient Britons had a spiritual connection with the Alps!

Then, finally, some white man showed up and climbed the thing. Generations later, the mountain became a cause for which to claim victimization. Mission accomplished.

In other news from out of the offices of Obama's beautifully managed, Serene Police State: "China and Russia are aggressively aggregating and cross-indexing hacked U.S. computer databases — including security clearance applications, airline records and medical insurance forms — to identify U.S. intelligence officers and agents, U.S. officials said."

Ann Althouse said..."there was worldly wisdom in the maxim attributed to Napoleon that 'The tools belong to the man who can use them.'"

Not that naming a mountain is a crisis. It's the opposite of a crisis."

Admitting up front that this isn't a crisis (and not an example of a Congress gumming up the works and needing to be overcome extra-Constitutionally) undercuts the use of this situation as an example, no?

Justice Jackson's quoted maxim (say that quickly 10 times) specifically references "the tools." If "the tools" are any powers within a branch's Constitutional authority, fine, no argument. If "the tools" mean anything a person or branch can get away with temporarily, then you've got a big problem, in that if you believe that you can't simultaneously believe in a constrained goverment/gov. of laws--which as I said I am not sure I buy you believe.

Is "might makes right" ok as a legal doctrine as long a someone waves the "crisis wand?" Given how frequently our political leaders invoke crises--equating nearly every political objective as "the moral equivalent of war," for example--does anyone who believes in a Constitutionally-bound system of government really think that's a recipe for stability (or prosperity, happiness, etc)?

Anyway I think I detect some sly-ness in using a quote from a concurring opinion in that particular case, Prof, it being one in which the Court struck down a bald Pres. overreach.

I think there's some irony, too, in Jackson's confident assertion, since in fact many Courts from that time through the relatively recent past were at least somewhat successful in reining in the Executive (w/r/t separation of powers issues).

I'm not sure how seriously you're being, though--if you are reasoning in the vein of your earlier point about a situation wherein the draft is reinstated being so extraordinary that other normal rules wouldn't apply, for instance, then you might really believe that a crisis (of that sort anyway) would justify extra-Constitutional action.

This the right thing to do. After taking Native land the whites renamed everything too as a way of marking the territory. Of course, it's been called Denali by most people for years anyway so the change is simply 'official'. But it won't stop conservatives from crying about Obama abusing executive orders. If anyone feels abused by changing the name of a mountain back to what it WAS before then they must not have much of a life.

If you can find someone with standing to sue over this matter, go ahead. Alaska, through its congressional representatives, has been trying to change the name on the federal sites since 1975. Each time the efforts have been blocked by the Ohio representation all to protect the name of an Ohio resident who never went there. The law under which the executive order was issued was passed in 1947 and while there is a good case to be made that this order may not be proper, who really gives shit?Alaska has already changed the name for the state, anyone who goes to the mountain calls it Denali, and Congress has better things to do while the Ohio delegation licks its wounds over an issue most Ohioans care little about. For the record the naming only changes it to Denali on federal documents. Ohio can still call it Mt. McKinley if it wants to, in fact it can pass a law to do so and I am sure the governor will sign it.

Alaska has been trying since 1975 to change the name back to Denali. But the legislation was blocked by representatives in Ohio since then. So this isn't a 'renaming' at all. Naming the mountain McKinley was a renaming. Obama is simply letting Alaska have their right to name the mountain back.

Now that I've learned of the history, I approve of the change, but I do not think the method of the change was appropriate. Obama had no need to do this without getting buy in from the public.

For a guy that's supposed to be a community organizer, he sure doesn't like to convince people to support his ideas. He's a thug and that's the only way he operates, even when he doesn't have to. It's like Hillary lies, even when there's no purpose to lying. The scorpion stings, because that is its nature.

Obama had nothing to do with the name change. He is trying to take credit for something already processed through the US Board of Geographic Names, and approved by Alaskan voters. OTOH, it's fair to blame him for something he didn't do since he's taking credit for something he didn't do.

Since this is a law blog, show me where in the 1917 act where Congress named this geographic feature "Mt. McKinley." It does authorize a national park "in the region of Mt. McKinley" but does not name it by act of congress as the name was already established. This is the perfect troll for President Obama as it has caused ridiculous fireworks from his political opponents while everyone else is just bemused.

Mt. McKinley have de facto been Denali for a generation or more, just like a number of landmarks in New Mexico and Arizona that were named after US military officers or politicians in the years after the Mexican landgrab of 1848 have quietly been renamed in the years since the cultural Revolution.

Obama just could not resist taking credit for something that had already happened.

Humperdink said...So it's their mountain? I thought it was in a NATIONAL park.

Humperdink, you have highlighted the very moment in history when I became a conservative. In 1978, after failing to get the State of Alaska to knuckle under to Federal demands relating to the resolution of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, Jimmy Carter unilaterally and vindictively designated 104 million acres of Alaska land as national parks and monuments. Lands Alaskans had relied upon for hunting, fishing and mining were closed by Carter's fiat. It particularly annoyed me because in Glacier Bay, one of my favorite haunts, it was now forbidden to carry a firearm. Nobody in his right mind would gallivant around Glacier Bay without at least a .30-'06. As if to demonstrate this, an (unarmed) friend of mine got killed and eaten there a couple of years later.

Carter's action was intended to punish the State of Alaska for failing to do as he wished. At that moment the young Tyrone realized what a tyrant was the federal government.

@Tyrone Don't misunderstand me, I am mocking Matt's response to Obozo's unilateralism. I am hoping the next president chooses to let the states do what they want w/respect to the National Forest/Parks.

I live 3 miles from the Allegheny National Forest. It was privately held, sold to the feds, with the understanding the subsurface rights would be retained and utilized by the private owners. That would be the extraction of oil and natural gas.

The feds have continued to put up virtually insurmountable roadblocks every step of the way.

"Carter's action was intended to punish the State of Alaska for failing to do as he wished."

Oh yes. Carter is a vindictive individual of little or no charm. He hates Israel because Menachem Begin didn't bow low enough to suit him. Carter is like JFK's description of DC as "Southern efficiency and Northern Charm."

He is probably the meanest and nastiest man ever to be elected President. Obama is next.

I say No, because there is no reason to do it; there is no movement or drive to do it, this is nothing but a distracting waste of time, and whatever the Obama Whitehouse team is trying to get you to NOT notice with this will be MUCH MORE IMPORTANT.